Late Spring Newsletter 2025
I usually start my reports with a weather summary update, so I won’t divert from this format, but what does it mean for the wine vintage 2026?
Well I can’t be precise as so much can change between now and harvest starting in March 2026. Here are some generalisations to consider-
At our site in the Tamar valley, dryness in the growing season, reduces disease pressure, reduces yield but intensifies flavours except if true drought causes stress and leaf loss. Warmer temperatures throughout the growing season brings forward the harvest dates and builds flavours by increasing biochemical reactions in the berries that create the flavouring compounds that we smell and taste.
So how do we stand so far?
Winter rain was well below average, so without irrigation I was getting concerned by the end of August. Then Spring has delivered regular falls of rain, over 100mm for September and the Bureau of Meteorology is predicting above average rainfall until Christmas. This all sounds good but global warming is delivering wild swings in weather like when we had 200mm of rain in one week at the end of Spring last year. Like all farmers now, we have to ride the dragon’s tail of unpredictable weather. We’ve more than made up the Winter rain deficit.
While weather is out of our control, the choice of site and soil is ‘rock solid’.
On our label you will see the line ‘Grown exclusively on the property’. Right from the start I wanted to highlight the choices made in purchasing our property for the purpose of establishing a vineyard on an exceptional site to make wine. An old saying goes, ‘wine is made in the vineyard’, so the choice of site, varieties, trellising, management and layout all come into play.
Over the last 25 years we have had 7 different winemakers but the one invariable has been the imprint of our ‘terroir’ and our management of the vineyard over those years. Another old saying goes, “you can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear”. We have been fortunate to find good winemakers to ‘guide’ our wines to bottle with minimum intervention.
Europeans developed an appreciation for the best regions and sites to make great wine centuries ago but the New World has focussed on the cult of the winemaker. Of course there are many very talented winemakers but nothing can override the grape quality. And by quality, I don’t mean how pretty the grapes look sitting in the bins. The flavour, character and intensity is not something you can visualise, while big bunches of big shiny grapes can deliver dull, vapid forgettable wine.
When people come to taste our wine, we point out the view from our front lawn, partly because it is a lovely view across the Tamar Valley with Mount Arthur as the backdrop, but also to show how the vineyard faces North-East to pick up maximum sunshine and avoid the ‘roaring forties’ winds while sitting above the worst fogs and frosts that come each year.
You might wonder why ‘frosts’ are a big issue….each node on the cane left from last season, to be the growth cane for this season, has 2 ‘shoots’ within it. At present, the primary shoots have all emerged and are now green and that means they are susceptible to frost damage. As I said, there are 2 shoots/bud, so if the first shoots get burnt by frost, the second shoots will emerge BUT they will be ~ 4 weeks ‘behind’ where the primary shoots would’ve been for the whole season. This means that late ripening varieties (of which we have quite a few) may not get ripe enough before the first Autumn frosts arrive causing leaf fall. No more leaves means no more sugar produced so the grapes may not be picked at all.
BOM had predicted a frost for Sun night 12/10. We don’t have irrigation so we can’t use overhead sprinklers to protect the vines from damage. We rely on the fact that we are on a hill. Bob will check the temp at midnight & if approaching 0 C, he’ll go out & light the fires we have been ‘building’ since the previous Winter. As the hot air created by the fire rises, it draws air in at the bottom, thus creating a ‘convection current’ to keep the air moving in the vineyard…moving air doesn’t freeze. This bit of ‘applied science’ is what we rely on to avoid frost damage. Luckily we didn’t have a frost, but it got very close!
So I would encourage anyone truly interested in wine to ask yourself, ‘do I know and care where this wine I am about to purchase, originates?’
Is there a real story behind the label or could the fancy words and ‘passion’ have just been pulled together by AI or some clever marketing ‘spin’?
Authenticity is still hard to fake.
Cheers, Bob & Rita
